Nigeria's Autonomous Community – Geopolitical Experiment in Bankruptcy

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to stir Autonomous Community based on shifting sands of its meaning since the concept came into existence. Its features and characteristics draw from concurrent legislations since 1979 and its geographical footprint in Eastern Nigeria. This piece connects to Nigeria’s intergenerational institutional degeneration while it attempts to discern where autonomy sits as a subsidiary instrument as enabler or denier of life at the grassroot level.

Geopolitical Structures

With 19^th century British illegal occupation of the territories of sovereign nations in contemporary Nigeria, political territorialisation by imperial institutional violence became the prominent geopolitical instrument of domination and resource manipulation. The manufactured geographies imposed by the British prior to 1960 were geopolitical and geoeconomic entities inserted for the sole benefit of the empire parallel to the peoples' super-exploitation. Even the colonial transportation infrastructure and its underpinning geoeconomic policy hinged on taking out unjustly acquired unprocessed primary resources for British interest.

However, fundamental shifts in political consciousness and historical awareness dissolved the key pre-colonial posture of many previously independent nations now forcibly dissolved into a single entity without their consent. They lost their independence and sovereignty not without robust resistance of British destabilisation which not only discontinued intergenerational projects but also imposed knowledge systems that eased uprooting of the young from their ancestral grandeur. So imposed constructs forced most people to forlornly look up to London, Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Kaduna with powerful alienation and regression in the new era. Some refer to it as pacification.

Therefore, the notion that British gerrymandering were dignified and sophisticated achievements precisely misread history and deny imperial intentions. Still, it suffices to declare that those first fruits of the poisoned British system were dehistoricized to reject their glorious past and dehumanised to delete African agency to reappropriate history. The immediate and enduring impact is the legitimisation of authority by illegitimacy and the relegation of the new non-urban majority spaces as genuine spaces of living, innovation, creativity, participation and holistic development. The peoples were disconnected from their leaders, and new power instituted against the peoples sedimented the legacy of impunity in Nigeria's geopolitical innovation.

Military Political Cartography

Since Nigeria is a congenitally limping geopolitical project devoid of united popular participation, it was natural for British legacy to continue ad nauseam framed as (fake) independent indigenous ascendance. It is interesting to note that the Nigerian armed forces under various regimes became the sole political cartographer of the entity. Except for the creation of the then Mid-Western region, geopolitical reconfiguration remains a real military prerogative.

Nevertheless, expectations of sub-national geographies as enablers of decent livelihood and enhancers of high quality of life was stillborn. Not for lack of resources, rather abundant resources drives the marginalisation, exclusion, super-exploitation and pauperisation of the majority by the neocolonial comprador elite including the military leadership all derived from the British. The elite disconnection from their own history and their disaffection with majority reality sustained default imposition of despair on the peoples irrespective of religion or ethnicity.

At the lowest political geographies; subsidiarity, participatory innovation and creative mechanism barely thrive in the face of strategic strangulation of the majority from essential resources and cashflow. Enormous pressure bear down on families, kindreds, communities and local networks. There is no suggestion that these spaces have been exhausted of potentials for strategic breakouts from horrendous cycles of collective hurt. 

Autonomous Community Facts

Simply put, this concept is a creative potential of subsidiarity for geopolitical innovation loaded with derived sovereignty. Subsidiarity and autonomy are not foreign to Africans. Like all new concepts, confrontation with reality and post-theoretical implementation tests its efficacy and effectiveness. It is an entity marked by clear contiguous territory holding known population with political centre. The head is the first citizen, like the governor of a state and the head of state of a country. It is at the lowest step of the national geopolitical ladder but possess the highest potential to evolve and develop since the ruler-ruled distance is the narrowest.

How has it performed? How has it faired generally in Igboland? From geopolitics and geoeconomics perspectives, it is an abysmal experience of regressive experiments where experiments should have been limited. All the legal specifications, rights and responsibilities, duties and obligations were flung to the wind. The local elite have grossly intensified collective suffering by failing to deliver on  autonomous status. From a political geography viewpoint, its useful rich potentials on critical participation, resources flows, people-to-people interaction are still grounded. These capitals remain untapped, ignored and disregarded. 

Any assessment of autonomy performance must start from basic cost-effective elements. Most of these entities’ have stable communities, loyal populations and resourceful networks. The biggest resources are (family) people and land. Failure to instrumentalise autonomy manifests massive historical blindness to both colonial injustice and flag-independence machinations. Although the people elected unanimously for autonomy, they have become victims of leadership abandonment and uncritical disconnection from remote antiquity. If local elites and leaderships cannot deliver their own people through autonomy, where is their collective future?

Legalised Illegitimacy

As mentioned earlier, British impositions including coercing the peoples into poisonous knowledge system where the notion of power is disconnected from the people and power of a few is sustained by the destruction of majority opened the way for radical overthrow of millennia-long political consciousness. Pre-colonial legitimacy of power connected to divinity based on leaders’ deriving authority from the majority were dismantled thereby tying new existential/intellectual dependence on the new shallow knowledge, uncritical allegiance to foreign ideas and fatalistic looking up to new (distant) political centres. 

Semblance of power diminished to limited physical associations to places devoid of significant investment of policy, fullness of office and genuine resources allocation based on prior credible needs assessment. The same peoples who collaborated extensively to initiate autonomy eventually end up holding bottomless buckets of deception. Rudimentary political education diminished critical analysis, blunted genuine protests and increased collective deterioration.

Erroneous Learning

An uncritical review of attainment of imposed knowledge place Eastern Nigeria especially Igboland in the pole position. What does it mean? Attending formal learning is the medium to finesse new but strange excessive individualisation for meeting personal/nuclear family socio-economic needs irrespective of learning provider. Purposively, there is no qualitative difference between state, private and religious providers. It is about passing examinations devoid of historical consciousness, political awareness and connection to ancestral intergenerational projects. This is the grounding of rat-race based on replication of European epistemology and anthropology on the African landscape.

So, one ends up with autonomous leaders with high intellect, genuine exposure and personal accumulation. Nevertheless, most of them (men) are political ignoramus and isolated intellectual pigmies. They live among the people but are blind to their realities, pains, groans and hurt. They refuse to articulate their sovereignty via inclusive leadership, balk at opportunities to reform bureaucratic frameworks and implacably oppose credible strategic policy initiatives for their own flesh and blood. These communities have sufficient trained men and women, experienced professionals and retired experts. Sadly, most autonomous communities lack robust result-oriented and performance-targeted infrastructures, even the offices remain on paper while tunnel vision consumes the leaders.

On issue of markets, food sovereignty and health care; responses are abysmal. For land dwellers on  strategic arable lands, the peoples experience in food production which autonomy should incentivize and deepen through provision of extension services and innovative farming techniques. Autonomy should complement and enhance initiatives towards favourable government policies. Since most of the people are farmers, collective bargain on reclassifying populations as grant-recipient farmers would have been a strategic investment for holistic growth. Increased crop production, consolidated collaboration and reconfiguration of land use should potentially bring professionalisation, high standard of living and concentration of value addition.

Furthermore, geodemographic changes open opportunities for creating new market spaces to limit capital flight, increase opportunity cost and add value to communities via recognised specialised status. The issue is that colonial mentality prevent leaders from appropriating autonomy as genuine spaces of life, creativity, innovation and calibrated holistic development. They mistakenly ignore the sovereignty of autonomy, as spaces for grounding ideas and implementing social/political/economic models. Hence these communities stagnate, out-migration ensue, resources regress and tensions increase. Sustained tensions impact communities centrifugally as factions emerge; legal tussles gulp scarce resources and integral human development take back seat. The main victims are young people, the poorest and widows.   

Future Hope

A critical assessment of performance of Nigeria in the last 2 generations present a picture of regression laced with suffocating opportunities. The errors, impositions and failed practices are genuine raw materials for reconstructing the present. Such construction is impossible without an acceptance of collective responsibility in errors. Uncritical acceptance of imposition and unmodified implementation of European templates are irresponsible. While it is easy to criticize leaders, the people must bear the bulk of the criticism. Their failure to organize, discuss, discern and agree to new solutions plus confronting the leaders is fatal.

The first issue is tackling the knowledge system that inferiorised the peoples and delegitimized their dominant worldviews. Europeans are neither superior nor inferior; they are humans whose (immoral) leaders are motivated to accumulate resources far from home via superior weapons and dominate where there is least resistance. Evidence is lacking on European political, social, economic and religious initiatives in Africa being strategic goods for Africans. 

Since no person seeks from another the right to be, peoples should seek no legitimacy from outside themselves. New learning structure should be evolved to contextually refresh people's rights, responsibilities, duties, obligations, privileges and code of conduct. These offer pathways to inquire, clarify, present grievances, organise protests and resist unjust measures. People can't just shrug their shoulders at mounting collective degradation as if unchallenged alienation bring positive outcomes.

The concepts of independence and sovereignty as notions to be granted by another are morally reprehensible. This implicates a new form of knowledge starting with children and the young where dignity, authentic history, solidarity, mutuality, common good, spirituality, civilisation and intergenerational project are reinforced. Foreign ideas are to be adopted after thorough reflections, tests and strategic clarifications. Nevertheless, sub-national autonomy effectiveness have examples in many African countries and the Global South.

The second insight is the recalibration of autonomy powers, authority and mechanisms. Leaders and peoples must opt for a radical realisation that they have derived sovereignty for fuller imagination of unlimited horizon of authentic development. They should humbly review their errors through unlearning colonial poisons for continuous relearning of responsible African leadership. Local and continental examples are plenty for access on a mobile phone. Autonomy is the baseline and foundation for its residents and citizens where leadership and participation must be responsible, accountable, strategic and deliverable. 

The era of inauthentic and irresponsible posturing is over rather deeper citizens’ engagement is inevitable for strategic and collective productive outcomes. Families, kindreds and villages must be politically active, be alive to relevant issues/problems and make collective informed decisions on the way forward. The idea of self-made person, sufficient accumulation and impervious isolated status only present humiliated dimensions of injured success.

Strategic/tactical/operational plans must be developed through popular participation accompanied by relevant policies of pertinent community issues and implemented by competent personnel under credible oversight. Nothing stands still hence cultural reconfiguration is inevitable. Modest centralisation and gradual professionalisation should be integrated in a systematic manner. With these instruments, arrow-minded unambitious attitudes to leadership evaporate. Bottom-up initiatives deserve attention. Structural reforms for ordered prescriptions, timely proposals/debate and impactful policies must be part of autonomy. There’s no excuse for pretending that Nigeria will be better when strategic opportunities at the grassroot are dumped prematurely in the dustbin of ignorance.  

Summary

Nigeria's future is uncertain. However, the currency of its features, furniture and (unjust) structures are loaded with possibilities particularly at the lowest political levels. Collective suffering, pain and hurt have made it expedient to revisit history, pluck relevant themes and attempt their refreshment under the prevailing conditions at the local level. All leadership at the grassroots level must be responsible, participatory, sophisticated, proactive, open and committed to shaping and navigating challenges facing the people particularly food, economy and health. People's trust and resilience are elastic enough to tolerate quick qualitative leadership reversals. Autonomy frameworks provide huge opportunities and rich potential that deserve to be tested. Unless such tests are accepted as default, agreed collectively and implemented on verified mechanism, fired by solidarity and underpinned with authentic accountability and oversight; then another generation will be swept into existential darkness as drawers of water and hewers of wood. No human being including Africans deserve such dehumanisation precisely at the hand of their local leaders.